The jobs report was dismal. 186,000 new jobs is equivalent to a 20-yard sack. Besides, unemployment is also up, and the GDP is down for the first time in many quarters. Then there are dozens of other dismal news, such as the world's shipping industries dramatically downgrading their shipping projections.

The billionaires, nations, and shelves full of booksbetting on a global recession, depression, or utter collapse say the DOW is up for one very simple, clear reason: printing fiat (aka play) money. That cause and effect has been documented and studied -- a prominent contemporary scholar of that principle is a Great Depression authority named Ben Bernanke -- since one of the world's greatest civilizations literally invented it to pay for an unexpectedly long and costly war 2,500 years ago. Athens, the world's first democracy, employed the world's first free market system and first practical tax system to become one of the world's greatest civilizations ever. When 22 years of war left them broke, they invented deficit spending (i.e., printing IOU's, aka fiat money), which promptly flushed them down the toilet in 407 BC, to become an inconsequential province of the Roman Empire.

That pattern has repeated throughout history, including Diocletian's 301 AD "Edict of Prices" (aka governmental price fixing) which led to the value of gold increasing by 4,240,000 percent in just 50 years or so ... the world's first documented case of hyperinflation. Despite many repeat performances over the next 16 centuries, Reagan tried deficit spending yet again, sending the national debt past the trillion dollar threshold many economists suspect made recovery impossible. Bush compounded that fateful problem, and Obama quickly became the all-time U.S. champion of absolutely head-shaking, jaw-dropping, criminally wanton deficit spending insanity.

This left Bernanke only two choices:
A. Let the market cure itself at the expense of a devastating recession or even depression on his watch, or
B. Print trillions of fake dollars in the hopes of artificially inflating the market until it absolutely implodes into a giant sucking vacuum MUCH worse but a few years later than "A".

IOW, he was forced to accept mere bankruptcy a year or three ago or accept a much more drastic and prolonged global recession, depression, or worse several years later. Politicians are short term thinkers for obvious reasons, so he deliberately chose B. He has spoken and written for decades of the very purpose of printing fiat money (i.e., inherently valueless paper, metal, and electronic IOUs backed only by an administration's promise that "Trust us; we're the government"); he fully knows that it is a bandaid on Krakatoa, but his only alternative was accepting A.

Printing fiat money, aka quantitative easement, has been proven throughout history to ultimately fail at job creation. Its real, very deliberate, highly effective purpose is to surreptitiously transfer money from the public to the government. Hype? Nope; simple arithmetic. Each play dollar they print gives them a dollar to spend, which then devalues the dollars in your pocket because there is now one more dollar chasing the same old stuff ... goods and services. Multiply that by 16,500,000,000,000 and ya got a spending problem manifested by inflation. That in turn lets a nation pay back its debts in play money, which has been Ben's intent all along. He had no other choice (except, of course, the honorable way out: that far lesser, years sooner, MUCH shorter-lived crash of Option A.)

And that's from just 2 or 3 pages of the thigh-high stack of books I'm reading before I decide where to put our nest egg. My wife's long-term financial security may well depend on the decisions we make over the next few months, especially if her government pension's value drops or even collapses.

"And that's from just 2 or 3 pages of the thigh-high stack of books I'm reading before I decide where to put our nest egg. My wife's long-term financial security may well depend on the decisions we make over the next few months, especially if her government pension's value drops or even collapses."

Why not invest all your savings in guns and bullets. You've said yourself that gun retailers can't keep them on the shelves. With the evil gun grabbers in the government ultimately rushing to trash the Second Amendment and ban guns, you'll be poised to profit hugely from the anticipated hysteria. Forget about gold, and invest in guns!

What does a hundred pounds of guns sell for these days?
What would happen if the NRAs bosses printed up a trillion pounds on their 3D printers? Would the market for guns that explode on your hands plummet?

Once again it all depends on how you look at things, and who's opinion you want to believe. I'll choose not to believe this doomsday scenario, I know it's alot of bull. Lots of people are scared, and lots of people are making big bucks off this fear. I would not be at all surprised if the NRA and gun lobby are paying people to write this crap. Believe what you want to believe I wont argue.

The current nonsense about the collapse of civilization in Obamas hands started back when he was first elected but not yet inaugurated.
Limbaugh directly attributed the recession to Obamas policies without realizing O had not taken office yet.
Current books published lately take years to write and evolve from those dire predictions which did not come true. All my life there have been media nonsense about the impending collapse of our financial system and survivalists like me getting ready for it in the 70s.
I was mistaken.
Glad we never finished the lead lining in the shell of my dome house.

I haven't decided how strongly to believe in -- i.e., bet on -- the retreat or even collapse of the dollar. I'm just offering BSNBC (i.e., the White House press) fans a reality check, backed by millennia of facts and opinions derived therefrom, opposing the faith-based BS from politicians and their media mouthpieces. I read the WSJ and watch hours of economics news every day, and among the dozens of professionals -- NOT politicians -- I see each week, at least 95% say we're totally farked. The only thing in dispute from economics pros, including virtually every government and watchdog fiscal agency such as the CBO and GAO, on either side of the political fence, is just when it starts, how bad it will be, and whether it will last mere years or decades.

I'll choose not to believe this doomsday scenario, I know it's alot of bull.

PLEASE show me some solid evidence to the contrary; it might save me from making some big mistakes. I find VERY little such evidence in the WSJ, Barron's, the IBD, Forbes, the cable financial networks, the bookstore shelves, the CBO, the GAO, Bernanke's decades-long analysis of deficit spending, world economic history, Reid's recent blast against Obmanomics, or the general news media. And, believe me, I'm looking (anywhere but Paul Krugman or Chris Matthews) for substantive and supported voices against another recession or worse. I finally found a book heralding the imminent long-term collapse of precious metals, but so far its defense is primarily a laughable circular argument full of gaping factual and logical holes even Shawn Penn could drive a truck through.

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